Thes

Background: The number of people affected by dementia continues to increase. Dementia is progressive and affects the ability of the person to care for themselves with time. The persons living with dementia have cognitive changes that worsen over time and affect their physical function. Latino families are known for being a collectivist culture who value family. There are studies that describe the experience of caregivers caring for someone with dementia; however, vi few are focused on multiple family members.

Background: Shifts in locations and levels of care and changing demographics have created a high demand for informal family caregivers. The U.S. healthcare system could not sustain the financial or human resources necessary to meet the needs of care recipients who are dying without the assistance of informal family caregivers. End-of-life caregivers pay a price— emotional, social, financial, and physical—throughout the caregiving process. Many factors contribute to the cost of caregiving, such as caregiver distress and burden.

Background: As the aging population increases, the rates of degenerative diseases associated with advanced age, such as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, also rise. Thus, the caregiver population grows in response, increasing the rates of caregiver burden.

Background: Long-term care, also known as aging services, is evolving to meet the needs of the aging population in the United States, which is increasingly ethnically and racially diverse. The objective of this qualitative multiple case study was to understand how immediate family members experienced the transition of older African American women as they moved into assisted living facilities. Design: Black feminist theory provided a theoretical framework.

Due to projected growth of the 65-and-older population and concerns of an impending care gap, reliance on informal caregivers is expected to increase. Improving support for informal caregivers is viewed as a national priority, yet research related to the unmet support needs of informal caregivers is limited.

Alzheimer's disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States and more than five million Americans are living with the disease (Alzheimer's Association, 2016). Alzheimer's disease takes a devastating toll on caregivers. According to Richardson, Lee, Berg-Weger, and Grossberg (2013), many factors influence the perceived burden of caring for a relative or friend with Alzheimer's disease (Richardson et al., 2013). These factors include characteristics of the caregiver, such as kinship ties, gender, psychological resources, and coping strategies.

Dementia caregiving is costly for society and has been linked to many adverse outcomes in the caregiver, including financial and occupational strain, greater psychological distress, and physical comorbidities, together termed “caregiver burden.” Certain dementia care recipient characteristics, such as the presence of neuropsychiatric symptoms (e.g., hallucinations, agitation), are associated with high caregiver burden. One neuropsychiatric symptom, sexual disinhibition, has received little research attention.

Comprehensive improvements in medical care, technology and residential settings have resulted in persons with developmental disabilities (DD) advancing to older age and outliving parental caregivers (Heller & Arnold, 2010). Typical siblings are expected to become the primary caregiver to their sibling with DD when parents become ill or die and unable to provide care (Burke, Fish, & Lawton, 2015; Heller & Arnold, 2010).

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the grief/bereavement process of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) caregivers following death of a family member in long-term care (LTC) and develop a theoretical model of this phenomenon based upon in-depth individual interviews. There is limited evidence examining ADRD caregiver grief and bereavement following family member death in LTC settings. Grounded Theory methodology has not been utilized to explore this phenomenon.

BACKGROUND: There is a growing population of older patients with End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) managed without dialysis in Thailand, and services have yet to be developed to specifically respond to the needs of this group. As a consequence this population are likely to have unmet needs with respect to health care and suffer from symptoms that could be better managed.

OBJECTIVE: This qualitative study explored experiences and health care needs during the last year of life among older people with ESRD, managed without dialysis, from the perspective of bereaved carers.